In case you haven’t heard, things for Tomas Kaberle in Boston aren’t going too well. Since joining the Bruins in a deadline deal with Toronto, Kaberle hasn’t been the point producing power play quarterback they hoped he would be. In 24 regular season games with the Bruins he had just one goal and eight assists. Not exactly a major impact there.

In the playoffs, life hasn’t been any easier for Kaberle as he’s gotten just three assists in all with two against Montreal and one against Philadelphia. Making matters a lot worse is how bad Boston’s power play has been in the playoffs. The Bruins are a paltry 2-41 with the man advantage throughout the playoffs and they again looked very bad with it in Game 1. Kaberle’s lack of production and overall poor play isn’t helping things.

“Those things you have to put behind you; [put] the past behind you,” said Kaberle. “I’ve felt good. I thought I’ve had good legs. When you make a mistake, you have to put it behind you, that’s all you have to do. If you keep thinking about it it’s not going to make you any better.”

Kaberle blamed the “bend of his stick” after the game for the Scott Norwood-like misses at the net…

If Kaberle hasn’t been missing the net he hasn’t been taking many shots either. One of the sources of frustration for Bruins fans is they feel that Kaberle doesn’t shoot nearly enough, especially on the power play. Through 12 playoff games, Kaberle has 16 shots on goal. We’re not saying that he should be shooting as much as say Alexander Ovechkin would but just over one shot on goal per game is poor.

Claude Julien tells Haggerty though that Kaberle just needs to improve while not stressing so much about the role people believe he’s meant to fulfill.

“I think there is no doubt people have looked at him as a savior because our power play had been struggling,” said Julien. “He is just a piece of the puzzle. It’s unfortunate but the other guys on the power play have the responsibility to do their job as well. He is one of those guys that’s probably feeling the pressure because people seem to think he should be carrying the power play.

“He’s an important part of it and I think if he finds his game he is going to be an important part of it. He’s not the reason our power play isn’t going at the rate we’d like it to go. We’ve had to take some pressure off him and just let him play his game. I think if he plays his game he is going to help us a lot.”

So far, Kaberle hasn’t been able to do that and to make matters worse, he’s been demoted to the team’s third defensive pairing. While the Bruins worked on different power play setups today including using Tyler Seguin with the forward units. Either way it’s up to Kaberle to get his business figured out because if he can’t, the Bruins aren’t going to go much further than this round of the playoffs. While that’s ultimately an improvement on the past, they’ve got a huge opportunity to make the Stanley Cup finals and perhaps win the franchise’s first Cup since 1972.